


Our Fortress Can Hold Back The World And All Its Horrors

by gigglingkat



Series: People Who GROK Bucky Barnes [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Civil War (Marvel), Extended Scene, Gen, Spoilers, heartstrings will be pulled, kat writes the happiest things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-13 22:12:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4539300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gigglingkat/pseuds/gigglingkat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SPOILERS FOR MARVEL MOVIE CIVIL WAR.  If you have avoided the Ant-Man end credit scene, you want to avoid this fic.</p><p>This is what I'm telling myself happens next until proven otherwise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Fortress Can Hold Back The World And All Its Horrors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KateMonster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KateMonster/gifts), [clex_monkie89](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clex_monkie89/gifts).



> Spoiler Summary:
> 
> I will die of angst before Civil War comes out (On my birthday!) if that's where they leave us. So I wrote fix-it fic that has no chance of being real, but will soothe the angst until next May.

_I know a guy —_

*********************************************

He wasn’t quite certain what was happening, no unfamiliar feeling these days. He knew they were _failing_. He knew HYDRA was _winning._ It was enough to make him overwhelmingly angry, which made it harder to grasp at the words that floated in his head and faded away. The others just talked around him, making him feel ignored and even angrier.

“Jemma, shut _up_ , you are not going. _I am,_ ” finally exploded out of Fitz. The silence was immediate and everyone, except Coulson, stared at him.

“Fitz,” Jemma began, her voice softening to that hateful, condescending tone. “It’s not that I think — This is a _medical_ issue. _I_ should be the one —”i

“It’s a _mechanical_ arm, built with HYDRA biotechnology,” he interrupted, the minor victory over remembering the words overlooked, in the need to speak. “ _You_ want to …” _study/analyze/interpret_ there were too many words that refused to behave, “…poke at him. You want to _fix him_ and you never know when that just makes it worse!”

The tears didn’t come, which was a blessing for all. Coulson handed him a case and tapped him on the shoulder. They left, in the awkward silence that was their new normal. Because of him, because of Ward, because of her, but, above all, because of HYDRA.

**********************************************

He still wasn’t quite certain what was happening, three hours later, as he and Coulson stood outside a warehouse. Coulson had … _briefed_ … told him what had been happening in the world, but most was immediately forgotten. _Memory retention issues / brain damage._ Fitz wasn’t sure what was worse, when he couldn’t remember the words, or now that they floated, but refused to be said.

Captain America had found his friend, Sargent Barnes, but HYDRA had found Barnes first. There was a … _biomechanical/ neurological interface/ override imperative_ … a metal arm that would not let Barnes fully remember who he once was.

 _Political ramifications/ legislations /restrictions …._ Bad things had resulted, and, people, who should be working together, were now at odds.

“Do you think, maybe, Simmons should have come?” he asked Coulson, while they waited. Self-doubt was part of the new normal too.

Coulson shook his head. “I need someone who will only focus on the problem at hand. Jemma …”

He didn’t finish, as their newest friend, Scott, who had a suit that … _integrated / manipulated / utilized_ … used Pym particles, opened the door. The idea of Scott’s suit made every word that wouldn’t behave dance like a rainbow in Fitz’s brain. It brought an overwhelming desire to talk to Simmons, which just meant more pain and anger.

He ignored him instead.

Coulson and Scott went to explain themselves to Falcon and Captain America. Fitz just went over to the man sitting with his arm in the vice.

“Hello, Sargent Barnes, I’m Fitz,” he began, these words had been practiced on the trip. They flowed with no pausing, and he even managed to pull up a chair while doing it.

“That is _not_ my name!” The man growled, which threw the rest of the speech out the window, and left them there in silence.

Coulson saved them. “Our apologies, we don’t know you by any other alias. What would you prefer to be called?”

Seated across from him, Fitz could see the conflict. Names were floating in the man’s head just like words floated in Fitz’s head. They wouldn’t behave. 

Coulson, because he was the best man that Fitz knew, didn’t stumble. “’Hey, you’, it is then! Now, Cap, if we could just speak for a moment —”

They left. Fitz fought for a moment, but the word came. “ _Sir_ , I am a scientist. I wish there was another word for it, and I know what that must mean to you. But, it is what _I_ am, and it is _not_ what the people, who did this to you, were. They were HYDRA.”

The practiced speech was over, the words would be harder now, so he tried to keep them to a minimum.

He pulled over an overturned bucket and set his case on it, opened it, and spun so the man could see it. “This…” _neuroinhibitor / integration jammer_ “… piece,” he indicated the blue glowing strip, “should go …” _laterally across the deltoid / intersection of interface_ “… across your…” 

Fitz gave up and made a general motion across his own left shoulder as he struggled with the words. The man just watched with suspicion. They sat for a few moments in silence and then, something like comprehension and confusion flitted across the man’s face.

“Oh yes, you’ll need to do it,” Fitz assured him. “I think enough people have touched you. It will let you control your…” _biomechanical // cybernetic_ “… arm.”

They sat as the man contemplated the case and Fitz in turns. Fitz knew he should be saying soothing things, but all those things came out in Jemma’s condescending voice. She never meant it, but the things he could no longer grasp got in the way. He used to be able to finish her thoughts, now he couldn’t finish his own.

Their stillness must have looked … _peculiar_ , because Scott called over, “How’s it going over there?”

“Oh…” _it’s going swimmingly_ “we’re swimming… I mean, no. I mean, we’re _fine_. We are just… fine. Sitting here. Not killing or … experimenting! Yes! Experimenting on each other. We’re not, I mean.”

He was too elated at finding the word to notice the looks he got for them. Coulson whispered something to Cap and they all returned to the other room. 

Fitz smiled at his… patient, yes, _patient_ , and realized the man was solely staring at him now. Fitz’s smile faded away and they returned to their silence.

“Who _are_ you?” The man finally asked.

“Oh, didn’t I say? I was supposed to say. I’m Fitz, Leo Fitz, but no one calls me Leo. I’m just Fitz. I’m a scientist, I said that part, you probably weren’t listening. Oh, you said your name wasn’t Barnes. You probably didn’t hear me.” Fitz had never been able to stop talking once he started, he just used to make more sense. At least, he hoped so.

“Have you decided what we should call you? ‘The man’ is getting difficult for me to process.”

He looked like he wanted to reply but couldn’t, which earned him Fitz’s renewed sympathy. “Sergeant is just a rank. I can call you Sarge?”

A barely noticeable nod was the only reply. Sarge tried to speak again but just growled slightly in frustration and tried to flex his arm. This brought the vice back into play, and Sarge’s gaze fell on Fitz’s case again.

“What does that do?” Sarge asked.

_Provides interference / overrides override imperatives / restores neurological pathways to muscle memory / disallows cybernetic feedback beyond hypothalamic reactions / makes my head ache!_

Fitz held up a hand and waved vaguely. “It just… makes your arm just an arm again. Stops it …” The words were flooding too fast to even think now. He sucked in a large breath. “It stops it from controlling you, and puts you in control of _it_.”

“Can _you_ control it?” Sarge questioned immediately.

“You mean remotely? No, there’s no signal. It is designed to _block_ signals. The only thing that should get through are your own motor control reflexes.”

“ _Should?_ ”

“Well, yes, I designed it from known specs. But, it’s not as if there are several of you, running about… there’s not several of you, running about, are there?” Fitz grew momentarily alarmed at the thought.

“What’s wrong with you?”

People usually didn’t ask, although Fitz preferred the bluntness to the whispering and concerned looks.

“On the day HYDRA came out of hiding, my best friend tried to kill me and my partner. It didn’t work, but I went without oxygen for too long,” Fitz explained. These words were well rehearsed. “I used to make things. I still do but it’s slower, and words are … difficult.”

He held Sarge’s eyes and said, “Things that might be memories, might be words, might be anything, float around and feel like they should be so easy, but they just float away. You can’t force them, relaxing doesn’t help, meditating doesn’t help, _nothing_ helps. They just won’t behave.”

It was recognition and fear in Sarge’s face now. He found himself shrugging, “I’ve gotten better. I might … improve more. I might heal still.”

He pointed to Sarge’s arm, “But I can fix that, _now_.”

Sarge picked up the strip. “What do I do with it?”

**********************************************

Twenty minutes later, Coulson reentered the room and stopped cold. Fitz didn’t think Sarge had noticed, but he knew his director well enough to sense the alarm.

“Fitz,” Coulson began, using what May called “pleasant voice #3,” the one he used to yell at subordinates without alerting the bystanders. “Why is he out of the vice?”

Despite the innocuous tone, everyone was suddenly in the room with Fitz and Sarge. Fitz unconsciously moved forward a little to be in any line of fire; he didn’t even notice until he caught the look on Sarge’s face. 

“Oh,” Fitz said, trying to calculate the best response. Words didn’t even float around, so apparently, his brain was at a loss on both sides of the damage. He looked to Sarge for help, but Sarge’s blank stare was firmly in place.

“ _Oh_ ,” parroted Wilson. “Do you know how hard — “ he cut off as Coulson held up a hand.

Fitz tried to find words. “But the … thing is operational now! We’re good.” He turned more fully to Sarge. “Right, Sarge? You aren’t going to murder us.”

A sudden thought occurred. “You would tell _me_ if you were going to murder me, wouldn’t you?”

The stare was more disbelief now than blank, but Fitz supposed it was progress, nonetheless. Sarge simply nodded.

Scott scoffed from the doorway, “Well, hey! If he _pinkie swears_ —”

“Belay that,” was a curt interruption from Cap, who was slowly inching towards them. “How does it feel?”

Sarge shrugged. “It doesn’t hurt.” He looked at Fitz. “But the memories have _stopped_.”

Fitz felt the interest bubbling up with more words. _Neurological interface affects memory retention and retrieval. From the deltoid?! Ask Jemma. Run diagnostic tracer under MRI. Askjemmaaskjemmaaskjemma._

Fitz became aware of everyone staring at him and realized he’d been waving his hands in the air aimlessly. He grabbed his pad. “I need… I need you … to … _sit down here._ ” 

Fitz wasn’t certain if the words had made it out, or if Sarge had just correctly interpreted the hand waving. He heard Wilson whispering, _is he okay_ , and looked sharply over, to see Coulson waving off the concern.

“What are you thinking, Fitz?” Coulson asked.

Fitz closed his eyes and gathered the words. “There is more to his arm than just his arm.”

**********************************************

Another hour passed before Fitz had all the monitoring set up. It should have only taken minutes, but, between having to soothe Sarge’s suspicions of every electrode, and having to quell the constant _ask Jemma_ s of his own mind, an hour was still respectable speed. 

Coulson had taken Scott and Falcon on a quinjet to the Helicarrier to work up some preliminary strategies, but Captain America had refused to leave Sarge. Being observed with disapproval, by an actual icon, had not increased Fitz speed either.

“I think we’re ready,” he announced, as he typed on his pad without further waiting.

Sarge asked, “What will all this _do_?”

Fitz showed him the pad, “It’s doing it. I’m trying to track the source — that’s odd. Oh.” _Intercranial implant / neurological feedback loops / temporal lobe bridges_

“ _Oh?”_ asked Sarge and Cap in unison.

“There’s a … chip… yes, chip. It’s in your head, that’s why nothing is happening.”

Sarge just growled, but Cap certain became animated. “What kind of ‘chip’ and how the hell do we get it out?”

Sarge stood, “ _No one is cutting me open._ ” 

They began to square off and Fitz grabbed frantically at Sarge, “Wait. Wait. This is _good_. Well, I suppose, not “good” but no — no one is going to have to cut you open.”

“Buck, let us —”

“ _Don’t call me that._ ” Sarge sat back down, crossed his arms and glared at them both. 

Fitz recognized the look on Cap’s face. He’d seen it enough time on Jemma’s. He stepped between them, wishing Coulson, with his way with words, was here. Instead, he didn’t try, he simply said, “We decided to call him ‘Sarge’, Captain.”

He turned with a wink, “Which means he outranks you, Sarge.”

While Sarge looked outraged and Cap offered Fitz a grateful grin, Fitz took advantage of the distraction to make some adjustments, “Tell me if you …” _sense_ “… sense anything.”

Sarge shook his head, earning a frown from Fitz. The … _neural link_ … connection between the arm and whatever was currently in Sarge’s … _temporal lobe_ … brain was still not accepting … external input, but the _internal_ should work. 

Something, that might have been a residual memory now lost, sounded out in his head, _look to your patient._ He looked at Sarge, still sitting with his arms crossed, looking as if he expected an attack at any moment.

“You need to …” _meditate/ relax/ reduce stress “… feel safe.”_

Both men looked dubious. Cap offered a suggestion, “Think of something safe, you mean?”

“Yes, no… _remember_ something safe.”

Sarge took a breath, likely to complain again that he couldn’t remember anything, when a startled look entered his eyes. He looked wildly around for a moment, then focused quizzically at Fitz. “I saw… something.”

Fitz nodded. “Yes. Good. What was it?”

The anger and distrust in his eyes were fading, another good sign, that even Captain Rogers could see. “There were… cushions?”

Fitz thought for a moment that his brain was not processing the word correctly. _But how many meanings could “cushions” have?_

Sarge looked around, as if willing the vision back. “There were… an unlikely number of cushions.”

The phrase cleared the confusion off Captain Rogers face, replacing it with a tentative ghost of a smile. “The couch. You remembered the couch fort we would build when we were kids?”

Sarge looked over at him, none of the anger or suspicion returning. “Couch fort.”

It wasn’t a denial, so Rogers kept talking. “Yeah, Bucky.” No reaction to the name encouraged him to take a step forward. “We grabbed every cushion from all the couches in our apartments, even grabbed some from neighbors. We overturned your mom’s largest couch and built our fort.”

Sarge’s eyes strayed around him, obviously beginning to envision the memory again. Fitz made some subtle adjustments on his pad, strengthening the feed and, now that he could differentiate, suppressing the HYDRA command stream.

Rogers just continued. “The first time we did it, your mom came in and just stood in the doorway. We thought we were going to be in trouble, but she just said —”

“That’s an unlikely number of cushions,” Sarge finished with Rogers. He looked off in the distance, clearly remembering. His eyes suddenly filled with tears. “That’s — that’s my mom?”

Rogers eyes nearly flooded as well. “Yeah, Buck—”

Fitz looked down at his pad, feeling as if he were suddenly intruding. 

Rogers moved over to his friend, who was looking at him in confusion. “Steve? What happened to you?”

An actual grin appeared on Rogers’ face. “I joined the army.”

A tentative smile came to Sarge. “Is it permanent?”

“So far.”

All the smiles faded as Sarge asked, “Did it hurt?”

Every feedback indicator Fitz had suddenly began redlining, as Sarge bent in distress, holding his head. _Nononononononono_. “Oh,” he muttered, rapidly tapping the pad. 

Rogers caught his friend, possibly preventing him from launching himself at Fitz. “Stop saying ‘ _Oh._ ’ What’s happening? _Help him!_ ”

Fitz had already completed the command code, letting Sarge catch his breath. “I’m sorry, I’ve blocked the feed. _Temporarily,_ ” he assured them, as they reacted. “We just need to let the memories come on their own in a safe environment.”

“How the hell do we do that?” asked Sarge, growing frustrated again, but not withdrawing from Rogers. Rogers himself looked puzzled momentarily, but he rapidly caught on and began softly laughing.

“Yeah, we can work with that,” was his only comment. Fitz beamed back.

**********************************************

Fitz had lost track of time, but it was after dark, when there was a knock on the shield acting as a door. Rogers pulled it aside and solemnly asked their returning companions, “What’s the pass phrase?”

“Avengers, assemble,” answered Coulson, immediately stepping in to admire the 4 meter tall structure of cushioning, parachutes and repelling gear. Wilson and Scott remained outside, taking in the sight.

Wilson commented, “You know, the most surprising thing about this? That I’m even surprised that you built a pillow fort.”

Scott concurred, “As the father of a small, little girl, gentlemen, I applaud you. This is one massively impressive fortress of solitude.”

They had finally entered and were inspecting the “ceiling.” Wilson asked, “Is that my Falcon suit holding up the tent?”

Sarge answered him, “We needed it to float higher. Thanks, man. Works like a charm.”

Wilson slowly blinked and broke into a wide, welcoming grin. “Hey, man,” he joked, stretching out a hand. “Anything for a fellow vet.”

Sarge took the hand, slightly abashed, and asked, “Even one who threw you off a flying fortress?”

Sam considered. “Well, I mean, _obviously_ , you owe me a beer. But, nah, we’re good.”

Coulson had made his way over to Fitz. “I take it you managed to work out the technology.”

Fitz nodded. “The arm is more than just incredibly strong, it’s serving as memory storage — including Sarge’s own memories. I was able to … isolate the commands from simple memory retrieval and set the chip to read only.”

Coulson nodded, in understanding or acceptance, Fitz could never tell. “What if there are issues?”

“With the whole,” Fitz made stabbing motions, “killing everything? That’s a matter of his personality. We seem to be doing well. He still remembers _how,_ of course.”

Coulson looked vaguely distracted for a moment with concern. He shook himself and smiled at Fitz. “No, this is a win. Let’s just enjoy it.”

He looked around again, and a look of apprehension appeared. “Where did you get — did you raid _the bus_ for cushions?”

Fitz nodded. “Captain Rogers borrowed a car and we went out to get them.”

Coulson just looked at him with growing alarm and bemusement. “ _You_ get to explain to May.”

 _The Calvary will always, eventually, win._ Fitz felt chilled.

“Oh.”

_Fin._

**Author's Note:**

> Shut up, KateMonster. I write the happiest things. ALL THE HAPPY. LOOK AT IT. Cap saves Bucky with A PILLOW FORT. Your argument is INVALID. :P
> 
> Once again, I have gift fic without a beta. Please feel free to nitpick, I'll correct it. No, I won't be offended.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Our Fortress Can Hold Back The World And All Its Horrors](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13268055) by [Hananobira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hananobira/pseuds/Hananobira)




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